The LazyAssGeek’s

OK, ok, ok… I know, it’s taken me FOREVER to write this entry. Sheesh, you people are SO impatient. You just can’t rush this kind of greatness!

So after running some more errands, including stopping at the town hall where Biggi used to live so she could update her address to the US(you cheater!), we arrived at Andreas & Susan’s. I described their home briefly in an earlier post, but I’ll try to fill in some gaps. Basically it’s gardening heaven meets technology heaven, so Biggi & I were both very happy there. After 3 days without Internet I was VERY happy there! We got there late afternoon and made camp out in their Winter Garden (Florida Room) where Andy & I fired up the laptops and got caught up with the world. That took a couple of hours sitting with beers and BS, so by the time the question came up “Pizza or go out?” the very easy answer was “pizza!” I definitely wasn’t out of the relax-mode we had entered at Fritz & Margret’s so that came very naturally.

The rest of the evening stayed pretty low key, with Susan getting home late evening after having to do inventory at work and then their sons Marius and Pascal (forgive any misspellings please!) joined us as well. After drinking those big bottles you see in the pic for a while, sleep couldn’t be denied for long. Andreas & Susan have finished their basement into what is practically a stand-alone home with 2 bedrooms(one of which is Marius’), a full kitchen and ANOTHER enormous bathroom! Andy & Biggi got the bed and I got one of those floor-sofa cushion things, which while a bit on the hard side wasn’t the worst sleeping arrangement I’d had! Unfortunately the combo of the beer and the hard bed led me right into snoring-land and Biggi had to shake me awake to stop me. Fortunately (especially for me, cause she’d have killed me) after that my snoring calmed so we were all able to sleep.

The next day really held more of the same – relaxing, socializing and of course, eating and drinking. They laid out a great breakfast. Not sure if I’ve talked about the typical breakfast, but basically it’s a big platter full of meat, cheese and bread, accompanied by a hard-boiled egg. Breakfast in the states is what Europeans generally would think of as an English Breakfast, eggs, sausage, bacon, etc. I was a bit hesitant about proper etiquette the first couple of times, while it seems obvious and all the folks were very friendly and comfortable it’s still different and you’re outside your comfort zone. However by this point I was a pro, some salami, swiss cheese and a slice of brown bread.. good to go! Andreas wasn’t feeling very well so he spent most of the day sleeping while we enjoyed one of the better days we had while we were in Europe, sitting on the back porch.

Yup, that’s a real bird.

Susan & Andreas are great folks and very gracious hosts. They are originally from the former East Germany and among the last to get out and move to the West before the Berlin Wall fell. As Andy tells the story, so I blame him for any inaccuracy or embellishment, they more or less got to where they were going to live after having left everything behind, only to watch the wall come down on TV that evening. Regardless of their timing it’s obvious that it was the right call as they have made themselves that often-mentioned great home and have 2 great sons. They have done all the work on the house themselves and Andy describes Andreas as something of a mechanical genius. They used to work together where Andreas was Andy’s boss and became great friends. Their accent is quite different from Andy & Biggi’s, though I think it was only obvious to me because I’d been in-country so long. To this American’s ear, it sounds like I think German would sound if spoken by a native Russian speaker. Andy does a GREAT impersonation of Andreas and will often have conversations with him as him. After a couple of beers, well it’s pretty damn funny.

Oh, and I’m remiss for having typed this much without having mentioned the 5th member of the family… Robby. Robby is a daddy’s boy and as he deserves, extremely spoiled. He likes Andy a lot too, but never did really warm up to me, so clearly he has issues with character evaluation. So.. here’s Robby!

A couple of years back, in 2006 I believe it was, Andreas & Susan had taken a safari trip to Kenya and Susan had edited their video into a DVD. Now I know, the joke always is getting stuck looking at people’s vacation pictures, but video of a safari with things you’ve only seen on Discovery Channel is a rather different experience. She really did a great job editing it down to 2 hours. I know the agony Andy went through with the 1000+ pics we took in Vegas, and will go through again with the hundreds from this trip and I’d bet it was harder with the video from the safari. They went to 3 or 4 different “camps” on the trip, taking a plane from one to the other. I use quotes around camp because most of these camps were really small resort areas. One was actually tents, but they were very large rooms created by those tents, hardly roughing it. From those camps they would load up in whatever Land Rover style vehicle was used and head off to safari. And they’re amazing images, straight out of every documentary you’ve ever seen. I started to type about the different animals, but it seems silly and wouldn’t be nearly as interesting as watching the video. Susan did a nice job with the background music too, using tradional music as well as music from Lion King, of course. Two of the interesting non-animal bits of the video were stops in villages. The first was very obviously a tourist trap, complete with a market and high pressure sales. The second was more remote and while you could tell they weren’t the first to stop there, they weren’t an every day occurrence.

The next morning returned us to gray & rainy, facing the long drive to Paris. Speaking of, many thanks to Andreas for printing & laminating Flat Stanley for us. My nephew Matthew is in 2nd grade and their class was doing a Flat Stanley project and so he colored a Flat Stanley up for our trip to Paris, which my sister scanned and e-mailed to me. With the miracle of technology, Flat Stanley appeared in Germany ready for his trip with us to Paris!

So after another good breakfast, we reluctantly loaded up the car and left our great hosts. Thanks again Andreas and Susan, hope some day you decide to take a vacation without your camper and we see you on this side of the Atlantic!